Small Town: The Story of a Family’S Generational Navigation Through the Jim Crow South

By Alfonzo Lanier

Small Town is a fictional story of a familys generational navigation through the Jim Crow South. The book is a collection of fictional stories woven together to describe the lives, times, and struggles of a black family living in the Deep South in a climate of racial animus. Three generations of family members experiences are depicted in a plethora of colorful characters.

The only thing that helped this family through precarious and challenging times was their faith, family, and friends. Ultimately, the book Small Town shows us that no matter what we encounter or embark on in life, we can achieve and be successful under even the most distressful circumstances. This familys accomplishments were typical of a generation of people who were persistent and who instilled perseverance in their children, passed down from generation to generation.

The Southern town where the setting of the book is depicted is a typical southern small town as they existed after the Civil War Reconstruction. Small Town refers not only to the population of the Southern town but also its mentality. Small towns were microcosms of the racist and white-supremacist attitudes that were pervasive below the Mason-Dixon line before and after landmark civil rights legislations.

Rumors and rumors of rumors were a constant in this environment. Everyone knew your comings and goings in this small American town, and similarly, just like the major cities, only a few prominent families dictated who would be the haves and the have-nots. The fictional family in this book displayed the balance and flexibility to walk the tightrope of race and bigotry to maintain a social status that was rare and unique for black families in the Deep South. Religion and education were the foundations for this family and were their main weapons against any adversity that they encountered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546229360

Alfonzo Lanier

Alfonzo Lanier, the author of Small Town, is a country boy from a small town who moved to a big city for college, graduated from college, and always had a love for history and writing. His lifetime of experiences and education is the culmination of this writing work.

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© 2018 Alfonzo Lanier. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/15/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-2938-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-2937-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-2936-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018902201

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Foreword

Preface

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

Bibliography

Foreword

The family tree has weathered many storms through time. The source of its strength has been its roots—so much, in fact, even when uprooted it has found ways to become firmly planted again. Parents are our protectors. Siblings are our confidants. Cousins are our first friends. Aunts and uncles are extensions of our mothers and fathers. Grandparents are our wisdom. These are people we would trust with our lives. Though members of the family tree’s connections are deep as those roots, branches and leaves have the tendency to sway their own way when the wind blows. Everyone has a family member whom you wouldn’t leave a purse unattended. The saying There’s one in every family generally applies to someone with an addiction but can be applied to any negative connotation. There are instances where most of or an entire family is no good, but like the case with honor among thieves, we still love our family members as deeply as those roots stretch far into the ground, providing a foundation for future generations to grow.

I was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised just outside the city limits. My maternal grandparents grew up in Terry, Mississippi, and my paternal grandparents in Washington, Texas. Yes, Southern roots though my sensibilities are Midwestern. My maternal grandparents, following in the path of the Great Migration decades prior, relocated to Chicago, or as it was called, the Promised Land. My father moved to Chicago shortly after graduating college for a career in education, where he met and married my mother, who was also in education.

Growing up, I heard countless stories about life in the South from the perspective of those who left at the first opportunity. Many recollections shared with laughter only acquired through years of healing were horror stories as received by my ears. Chicago had its own racial divide issues, but these stories reflected a time and place of which I couldn’t imagine any of the offenders being able to look themselves in the mirror. I wondered what it would be like to continue through those conditions as a black man in the South.

Irony has a way to enter each of our lives. After graduating high school, I continued my education in the South when I enrolled in Clark Atlanta University, located in Atlanta, or as it was called, the black Mecca. I moved from one bastion to another. With several historically black colleges, successful black businesses and professionals throughout the city, Atlanta seemed like an island without the surrounding water within the South I had heard about.

Though on Southern land, I insulated myself with the comforts and familiarities of home. My closest friends were from Chicago or places with similar urban backdrops like Philadelphia and New York. I waxed poetically about the virtues of Chicago deep dish pizza, though I rarely ate it when I was home, preferring the individual slices from my neighborhood pizzeria. I argued ’85 Bears and ’90’s Bulls against anyone else’s city teams. I managed to live in the South without the experiences of Southern living.

I met Alfonzo Lanier shortly after college graduation at my first place of career employment. Here was a gentleman who boasted of his Southern upbringing. He seemed three parts Baptist preacher and one part numbers runner. During down times, he told family tales ranging from methodically traveled rough paths like barefoot strolls on gravel roads to the ascension of admiration in small country towns rarely seen for black men, bringing to mind the sit-downs of Fredrick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln. These experiences resulted in an outlook on life in the South of a bird’s-eye view from a house on a hill.

Dialo Askia Allen

Preface

Small Town is a fictional story of a family’s generational navigation through the Jim Crow South. The book is a collection of fictional stories woven together to describe the lives, times, and struggles of a black family living in the Deep South in a climate of racial animus. Three generations of family members’ experiences are depicted in a plethora of colorful characters.

The only things that helped this family through precarious and challenging times were their faith, family, and friends. Ultimately, the book Small Town shows us that no matter what we encounter or embark on in life, we can achieve and be successful under even the most distressful circumstances. This family’s accomplishments represent a distillation of a generation of people who were persistent and who instilled perseverance in their children, which they passed down from generation to generation.

The Southern town where the setting of the book is depicted is a typical Southern small town as such existed after Civil War Reconstruction. Small Town does not refer only to the population of the Southern town but also to its mentality. Small towns were microcosms of the racist and white supremacist attitudes that were pervasive below the Mason-Dixon Line before and after landmark civil rights legislation.

Rumors and rumors of rumors were a constant in this environment. Everyone knew your comings and goings in this small American town. Similarly, just like the major cities, only a few prominent families dictated who would be the haves and the have-nots. The fictional family in this book displayed the balance and flexibility to walk the tightrope of race and bigotry to maintain a social status that was rare and unique for black families in the Deep South. Religion and education were the foundations for this family and were their main weapons against any adversity that they encountered.

1

On a hot summer day in Savannah, Tennessee, in the largest Baptist church in this small town, the preacher rose from the middle chair of his pulpit platform like a king from a throne. He began to recite the Bible verse that would be the premise of his Sunday sermon, based on Hebrews 11:1: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

In 1932, in the middle of the Great Depression, I was nine years old. My father was the only store owner in Savannah who provided groceries to black people. Back in those days, blacks were not welcomed properly at grocery stores where white people shopped.

My father worked six days a week in the grocery store and preached on Sundays from this very pulpit. Every Saturday, my father would go to the store at six o’clock in the morning and leave at four in the afternoon so he and I could go fishing and so we could have three to four hours of daylight regardless of the season. But on this particular Saturday, business was busier than normal, so my father sent word that he would not be able to go fishing with me and that we would have to do it another time. I was an impatient and mischievous child, so I decided to go fishing alone.

Lake Hope was the only area in Savannah where both blacks and whites could fish, although whites could swim in the waters while we blacks were forbidden to do so. By the time the sun had set, I had no fish to show for my efforts. I fell into a deep sleep on the bank of the lake.

When I awoke, it was pitch black at night, and I was surrounded by ghosts with white-hooded sheets! My bloodshot eyes were stretched by the bright image of the wooden cross that was engulfed in flames. It appeared that I had awakened to a Ku Klux Klan ceremony, and I was not invited.

Ever since I was four years old, my parents and grandparents had told my siblings and me about the horrors of the Ku Klux Klan, so much so that we feared the Klan more than we feared the proverbial boogeyman. I was scared! I was afraid! I was frightened! But I had faith that the Lord would see me through this fiery situation.

As the leader of the group approached me, I became more and more petrified. I assumed he was the leader because his costume was lavender and the other members’ costumes were white. You can only imagine how scared I was, being a nine-year-old child and the center of attention at a KKK rally! But my father taught me about Jesus, and he taught me about faith. I had a peace that came over me, and I knew everything would be okay.

The leader asked me what was my name and who were some of my relatives. I told him my name was Albert Johnson and that my father was Henderson Johnson, the owner of the colored grocery store and the pastor of the Mercy Grove Baptist Church.

From a distance, I heard a familiar voice from under the hooded sheets. The man said, That’s Preacher Johnson’s son, and I know him! Let the boy go!

The leader of the Klan asked him, Do you vouch for this boy?

The familiar voice said, I know Preacher Johnson! Let the boy go!

The leader looked at me and said, Boy, do you know how to forget the things that you have seen tonight?

I looked at the leader and said, Yes, sir!

The leader of the Klan then said, Well, you go home, and you better not tell anybody what you have seen or we will hunt you down and string you up to a tree. Do you understand, boy?

Yes, sir! I won’t tell anyone.

I proceeded to run away from the lake as fast as I could, and I finally made it home.

***

The following Monday, I went to my father’s store after school to help him make room for new stock food items. Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice speaking to my father. It was the same voice I had heard when I awoke to the Klan rally. It turned out that William Bell, a white business owner who supplied my father with some products for this grocery store, was the familiar voice under the hooded sheets. He was the Klansman who vouched for me and saved my life. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

In 1942, I was seventeen years old. The United States was in World War II with Germany, Japan, and Italy, and I wanted to join the army to defend my country. I passed the military exam with flying colors and was selected to fight in the European theater with an all-black platoon. In those days, the United States Army was not integrated, so black soldiers could not fight alongside white soldiers, although our platoon was commanded by a white lieutenant.

I was one of the youngest in my platoon, and the older soldiers took me under their proverbial wings and taught me how to be a good soldier. Being a country boy from Savannah, Tennessee, I had grown up around guns all of my life and was a pretty good marksman. In World War II, the United States opposed governments that embraced fascism, totalitarianism, and all their deluded racial theories. Yet when the conflict started, the army resisted the rising chorus of black and some white citizens who were demanding that the military be integrated. Unfortunately for those advocates, many generals shared the bias of the majority of Americans and were adamant that it was not the army’s duty to engage in a social experiment. So for most of my time in Europe, we black soldiers sat on the sidelines and were relegated to primarily occupying the unglamorous jobs of truck driver and stevedore. As disheartening as this was, I still had faith that one day we would fight side by side with our white brethren in defending the good ole USA. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

***

In March 1945, American soldiers were hemmed in on the east bank of the Rhine River, where they were desperately trying to resist the repeated German attempts to break and advance the front lines. The fighting was intense, and throughout the night, sometimes hand to hand, the American soldiers held their positions, firing flares, hurling grenades, and shooting wildly at shadowy figures as the enemy counterattacked.

While all of this was happening, we black soldiers were still sitting on the sidelines and waiting to get involved in the action. We wanted to prove that we were just as good as the white soldiers, and surprisingly, we felt no fear of being killed or injured.

We just wanted to fight!

For the men in my company, the situation had become more and more dire, but we had faith that we would be all right. Then, at that very moment, our commander asked us black soldiers to get ready to help out our white American brothers to thwart the German enemy.

As we approached our American soldier-brothers, they were shocked to see blacks coming to assist them. The Germans were such a formidable enemy that the shock soon wore off, and each man fought side by side to hold off the Germans.

***

On that day in 1945, on a ridge next to the Rhine, fighting with our white brothers seemed small in the struggle for equality, but it was significant in breaking down racial barriers. The white GIs of my company were mostly from the Jim Crow South, so even from their racist and white supremacist viewpoint, for that brief time, they accepted us as equals.

For the next two weeks, we black soldiers fought side by side with our white brothers, and we would not only defeat the enemy, but we were able to capture a large part of their platoon and hold them as prisoners of war.

But what became the pinnacle of my experience as a soldier suddenly turned into one of the most humiliating experiences. When we were transporting the German POWs back to our barracks, they were allowed to sit at the front of the army bus with the white American soldiers while we black soldiers were separated from them and forced to sit in the back of the bus. The explanation given to us black soldiers was simply that the prisoners might be Germans, but their faces were still white!

Even though I was angry, I had faith that one day things would get better. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

After returning from Europe, I was so happy to be home! We had defeated Hitler and Tojo, and we had eliminated the spread of fascism and totalitarianism.

I was sitting at the bus station after being dropped off in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and waiting for my last stop before arriving back in Savannah. When I became hungry, I walked over to the café beside the bus station, and there I was reminded of the worst ideals of the country I had just finished fighting for: The café was for whites only. The staff would not serve a black man, even though I was wearing my army uniform and they knew I had just returned from the war. The white soldiers, however, were ushered into the café; and many of their meals were free or at the very least discounted.

Though greatly discouraged, I still had faith that things would get better.

Upon my arrival back to Savannah, I married my high school sweetheart, worked at my father’s store, and helped him on his farm selling timber wood as well cotton and tobacco. I did this for a few years until I decided go to college to become a minister like my father. I applied for my GI Bill but was denied. The GI Bill was supposed to be for every veteran from the war, but the United States Department of Veterans Affairs became a formidable foe to many blacks in search of an education because it had the power to deny or grant claims of black GIs. Also, banks and mortgage agencies refused loans to blacks, making the GI Bill worthless to black veterans from the war.

Fortunately for me, I was blessed to pay for my own college with the help of my father. The best theology program in the state of Tennessee happened to be at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. I applied and initially got accepted because I refused to answer the question about whether I was white, black, or other. Once it was discovered that I was black, my application was denied. In 1950, black students were not allowed to go to any state university where white students attended. This was four years prior to the landmark court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which made segregation in state universities against the law.

I was discouraged and upset, but I had faith that things would get better. I applied to the historically black Tennessee State University in Nashville and was accepted, and on the day I received my letter of acceptance, my wife Rosetta told me that she was pregnant. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

I graduated from college in three years with a dual degree in theology and business. At this time, I had my degrees, and my wife Rosetta and I had two sons, my oldest Peter and the younger one, Dean. Over the years, my wife and I had four more kids: Linda, Mary, Ruth, and Tony.

In 1964, Savannah was feeling the pressure of the growing civil rights movement and the subsequent pressures of integrating the public school systems. I was approached by the head of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP. He wanted me to allow my son Peter to be the first black